Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.
This week brings a quartet of all-timers to 4K Blu-ray, along with a handful of ‘90s faves, some classic comedies, and a new Criterion box for a recently departed indie innovator.
PICK OF THE WEEK:
“Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films”: The passing last week of this Black cinema icon makes what was already one of the year’s best box sets feel even more valuable. In assembling his first four features – “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,” “Watermelon Man,” “Don’t Play Us Cheap,” and his best-known, most influential work, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” – Criterion displays not only his storytelling skill and budgetary ingenuity but his astonishing versatility, as the filmmaker moves easily from stylized drama to broad comedy to musical theatre to revolutionary text while maintaining his spiky intelligence and a keen eye for social commentary. These films were groundbreaking, yes, but they’re also ruthlessly entertaining, and this was a filmmaker who never lost sight of how to do both. (Includes “Sweet Sweetback” audio commentary, short films, new and archival interviews, feature-length documentary, featurettes, “Black Journal” episodes, introductions, and new essays.)
ON 4K ULTRA-HD BLU-RAY:
“The Shawshank Redemption”: It’s one of the great come-from-behind success stories of the cinematic ‘90s: Frank Darabont’s elegiac adaptation of a Stephen King novella opened in the competitive fall of 1994 to muted reviews and disappointing box office, before finding its audience on home video and broadcast cable (it became a signature movie on TNT and TBS). And that story matches the modesty of what’s on screen – it’s a grower, not a shower, telling its decades-long story of the power of friendship and the value of patience with quiet grace. Tim Robbins is spot-on as its focal character, finding the character in its quiet spaces, and this may well be the definitive Morgan Freeman performance: wise and weary, with narration that perfectly showcases his dulcet tones. And Warners’ 4K restoration is stunning. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, and storyboards.)
“A Clockwork Orange”: That goes double for the latest of the studio’s ongoing and distinguished Ultra-HD releases of Stanley Kubrick classics. His 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ novel proved one of his most controversial releases, with some critics and commentators reading its satirical portrayal of dystopian ultra-violence as endorsement (ah, yes, that old song). That’s all rubbish, of course, but it does speak to the visceral quality of his filmmaking – it’s the kind of movie that feels less like a story is being told, and more like it’s being inflicted upon you. Kubrick’s distinctive compositions are at their sharpest, slicing through the screen like a knife, and Malcolm McDowell has never been better. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, and trailer.)
“Unbreakable”: it’s odd to recall how M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 follow-up to “The Sixth Sense” was considered, at the time of its release, to be a critical and commercial disappointment (simply because it didn’t match the A-bomb impact of it predecessor). Many viewers now consider it his best film – this one included. It catches this filmmaker at his most confident, unpeeling his unconventional origin story with subtlety and skill, and wrestling with the moral dilemmas and ethical questions that such narratives often shunt aside. Samuel L. Jackson is marvelous (he keeps revealing unexpected layers, right up to the closing frames), and Bruce Willis finds all the right notes for his reluctant hero. (Includes featurettes, deleted scenes, and storyboards.)
“Labyrinth”: Jim Henson’s final feature directorial effort is a bit messy – by turns broadly funny, darkly creepy, and (as with so many studio movies of the mid-1980s) slightly coke-dusted. But it’s never not fascinating. Jennifer Connelly stars as a bratty teen who makes an ill-advised wish to rid herself of her baby brother (whom she’s stuck babysitting), only to find the tyke kidnapped by the Goblin King (David Bowie, flawless as ever), who gives her 13 hours to “solve the labyrinth” and get him back. So it’s a quest movie, and an entertaining one – and even when the tone wavers, the charming, hand-made quality carries it through. (Includes deleted and alternate scenes with commentary, screen tests, featurettes, anniversary Q&A, and trailers.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“Breakdown”: Jonathan Mostow’s taut road thriller gets a long-overdue HD upgrade from “Paramount Presents,” and it’s aged beautifully. The premise (shaded by the likes of “Duel” and “Dying Room Only”) is simple, elegant, and effective: When yuppie couple Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan’s car breaks down on a deserted highway, a friendly trucker (J.T. Walsh) offers her a ride to a truck stop to call for help… and she just disappears. More than that I won’t reveal, but the script (by Mostow and Sam Montgomery) layers on complications gracefully, Russell’s Everyman-of-action vibe is just right, Walsh is at his menacing best, and the car chase climax is an all-time white-knuckler. (Includes audio commentary, featurette, and interviews.)
“Love & Basketball”: Before crafting the complex pop-star drama of “Beyond the Lights” or the dazzling action wizardry of “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Blythwood made her feature debut with this low-key charmer about… well, see the title. Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps are the titular lovers/ballers, childhood friends whose love for the game and for each other blossoms (and gets complicated!) as they become teens and adults. It’s the kind of deeply felt, lived-in romantic drama that rarely got the greenlight for Black audiences back then; today, it feels like even more of a miracle. (Includes audio commentaries, featurettes, interview, deleted scenes, audition tape excerpts, short films, trailer, and essay by Roxane Gay.)
“Throw Down”: Criterion makes another welcome addition to its portfolio of directors with this high-spirited charmer from director Johnnie To. The Hong Kong auteur is best known for his action-heavy crime pictures, and those elements are certainly present in this 2004 effort – but it’s a gentler, more playful movie, modest in its drama, focusing on a likable and motley trio of dreamers and wannabees. There are fights and shoot-outs, yes, and they’re electrifying, but this is more of a mood piece, and the film’s restless nighttime energy and magnetic performances (particularly Cherrie Ying) are the real draws. (Includes new and archival interviews, featurettes, trailer, and essay by Sean Gilman.)
“The Damned”: It’s Feb. 27, 1933, the night of the Reichstag fire, and the Von Essenbecks, the wealthy, greedy family of arms manufacturers is celebrating Hitler’s rise to power, and all the money and power it will bring. But soon the family will turn on each other in an orgy of sex, violence, and murderous betrayal. Luchino Visconti’s 1969 film (new to the Criterion Collection) is both fascinating and grotesque, a true Grand Guignol of villainy, moral corrosion, and ruthlessness with an ending so jaw-droppingly, operatic and perverse that it must be seen to be believed. (Includes new and archival interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary, trailer, and essay by D.A. Miller.)
“Dementia 13”: Francis Ford Coppola seems determined to rework his entire filmography, but the results are usually improvements, so more power to him. His latest revision is also his earliest – all the way back to his first “real” movie (he’d done a couple of “nudie cuties” and some direction of tacked-on scenes for other films), which he wrote and directed in 1963 for, of course, producer Roger Corman. Corman reworked the picture (with the help of director Jack Hill); Coppola’s new version seeks to restore his original cut, as best he could. And it’s a corker of a Gothic horror story, making fine use of its atmospheric Irish locations, reanimating the “Psycho” dynamic (making us co-conspirators with its pretty blonde protagonist), and taking an unexpected turn into grisly territory. It’s all a little goofy, but a lot of fun. (Includes introduction, audio commentary, and prologue.)
“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”: The second collaboration between Steve Martin and his “The Jerk” director Carl Reiner sprung from an ingenious gimmick: this spoof of vintage private eye movies built its scenes around existing classics from the Universal library, allowing Martin to share the screen with such icons as Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Barbara Stanwyk. The results are unapologetically silly and uproariously funny, yet crafted with genuine affection; esteemed cinematographer Michael Chapman (who also shot “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” among others) beautifully recreates the aesthetics of the era, and the costumes by the great Edith Head (her final screen credit) blend beautifully. (KL Studio Classics’ Blu-ray image is aces.) “Dead Men” plays like catnip for cinephiles – but it’s also a wonderful introduction to the era for younger viewers, who will then spend the rest of their movie-going years spotting those scenes in context. (At least, that’s what I’ve done.) (Includes audio commentary, radio and TV spots, and trailer.)
“A Night at the Opera”: The Marx Brothers’ first five films for Paramount got the Blu-ray treatment back in 2016, but we’ve been waiting patiently for the MGM pictures from the back half of their career to get the bump. Warner Archives is starting at the beginning of that period, with this 1935 classic that marked their first film for the studio – and its wunderkind producer, Irving Thalberg. Thalberg’s directive to mainstream their movies with more musical numbers and romantic interludes certainly make them less fun, for contemporary viewers, then their more anarchic Paramount vehicles. But there are still plenty of laughs here, with classic sequences by the handful: the contract negation, the stateroom scene, the door-slamming farce in Groucho’s apartment, and the barn-burner climax, as the brothers take over the opera’s opening night and all but burn it to the ground. (Includes audio commentary, featurettes, Groucho TV appearance, and trailer.)
“Straight Time”: Dustin Hoffman crafted one of his finest performances of the 1970s – no small praise – in this searing adaptation of the novel by ex-con-turned-writer/actor Eddie Bunker (best known these days for his turn as “Mr. Blue” in “Reservoir Dogs”). It was a labor of love for Hoffman, who originally planned to direct the picture in addition to starring as the Bunker-like figure at it center, a recently released thief trying and failing to go straight. Ulu Grosbard’s direction is grimy and atmospheric – the film seems quite at home in the seedier corners of Los Angeles – and he assembles a first-rate supporting ensemble, including Harry Dean Stanton, Theresa Russell, and M. Emmet Walsh. (Includes audio commentary and theatrical trailer.)
“The ‘Crocodile’ Dundee Trilogy”: Paul Hogan was an Australian comedian and celebrity, known only in the United States for his tourism ads, when he co-wrote and starred in the fish-out-of-water comedy “’Crocodile’ Dundee” in 1986. But it became one of the year’s smash hits, and for good reason: it had a charismatic star, quotable dialogue (“That’s a knife”), and the juicy premise that a man from the untamed Outback would fit right into the urban jungle of ‘80s New York City. That premise lost some of its freshness when he returned in the engaging but lightweight “’Crocodile’ Dundee II” two years later, and the less said about 2001’s “’Crocodile’ Dundee in Los Angeles,” the better. But these films still offer a nice dose of ‘80s nostalgia, and a giggly reminder that once upon a time, we’d make movie stars out of the unlikeliest of fellows. (Includes featurettes and trailers.)
